


for the facing of this hour

by orphan_account



Series: Here we are but straying pilgrims [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alpha John, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Johnlock - Freeform, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, Miscarriage, Omega Sherlock, Omega Verse, Pregnancy, non-neurotypical Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 19:28:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8069818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It was still a week earlier than the packaging said the test would work anyway. Sherlock struggles with the conflicting data that he is getting from pregnancy tests and his changing body.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please, please, please, PLEASE read the tags. You know yourself, don't read this if it will hurt you.

_ Negative.  _

 

Sherlock glared at the piece of plastic, with its hateful single purple line and overly cheery packaging. 

 

_ Remember, even omegas under thirty can still have trouble getting pregnant the first few months after becoming sexually active. _ The doctor’s condescending warning echoed through his head, and Sherlock swept the test and eyedropper into the trash. 

 

It was still a week earlier than the packaging said the test would work anyway. 

  
  


\-- 

 

“Sherlock? Hey? What do you reckon?” Lestrade waved at Sherlock, who furtively closed the calendar app on his phone and stuffed it back into his coat pocket. 

 

“About what,” Sherlock snapped. 

 

“Er….about the body, crime scene, just this stuff in general,” Lestrade replied, motioning both to the body on the sofa and to the room at large. 

 

“I don’t care. I’m going home,” Sherlock announced. “Don’t call me again for something this boring.” He stepped over the (obviously written under duress) suicide note on the floor and headed for the door, willing himself not to look at the dead, heavily pregnant omega man on the sofa as he left. 

 

The cab ride back to Baker Street was interminably long. Sherlock could hear the kettle boiling as soon as he opened the door to the flat--at least there was one small mercy. He shut the door as quietly as he could, not wanting to tell John where he had been or what he had seen. 

 

“Hey love,” John said, appearing behind him and circling his arms around Sherlock to settle his hands over Sherlock’s belly.

 

“What,” Sherlock said flatly. “Are. You. Doing.” He shrugged a little to get out of John’s hold, and turned around to face him. 

 

“You know what I’m doing,” John said, a note of confusing creeping into his voice. “We--well.”

 

Sherlock felt his cheeks burn a little.

 

“It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything going on in there,” Sherlock said, flapping a hand at his belly. 

 

“Oh, come on,” John said with a grin. “You’re a chemist and I’m--how did the doctor put it? A danger to society? We picked the perfect day for it. There’s no way you aren’t pregnant.”

 

“I could have made an error in my calculations, and you don’t know that. Neither of us know that. Neither of us can know anything yet,” Sherlock said, his eyes prickling. “Stop saying that, you’ll jinx it.”

 

“Jinxes aren’t actually a real thing, love,” John said, letting his hands creep higher. “Besides, all the signs are there. Let’s see. You, Sherlock Holmes, have cried more in the past two weeks than you have probably in the rest of your life combined. Suddenly you actually get hungry and will eat an entire meal without me making you. You nap even more than you used to, since that’s apparently possible, and then there’s these.” 

 

John’s hands brushed across the fabric of Sherlock’s tailored shirt, which was straining even more than usual across his chest. When John’s hands reached the definite swell beneath the formerly flat nipples Sherlock gasped, then snached John’s hand away. 

 

“Stop that,” he growled. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

 

\-- 

 

But he thought that it did mean something, and that was the problem. 

 

_ Negative. Negative. Negative.  _

 

Sherlock dropped the tests into the trash one by one. Technically the tests were not supposed to work for three more days, but as he had told John, there was the possibility that he had miscalculated by up to a day, in which case there was a 50% chance of getting a positive today.  He folded his arms gingerly across his aching chest then dropped them in irritation. 

 

John was probably right--it was unlikely that he was not pregnant. John was rare variant of extremely fertile alpha, a “danger to society,” as their doctor had jokingly put it, and Sherlock himself was an omega under thirty with no prior sexual experience and no health concerns to speak of. They were the perfect pair, and their first time had been (he blushed to think of it) textbook. There was no reason at all for him to worry. 

 

“Sherlock?” John rapped on the door. “Lestrade’s in our living room with pictures from that case. He says--”

 

“Tell him to fuck off,” Sherlock interrupted. “I’m not taking the case.”

 

“Um...okay,” John said, clearly confused.

 

He heard some exasperated arguing coming from the living room, but kept the bathroom door firmly shut and locked.

 

\-- 

 

“So, what was that all about, then?” John asked later that evening when they were both in their pants in bed, one hand supporting his head as he leaned over Sherlock, teasing at his swollen and sensitive nipples while Sherlock scrolled through John’s blog on his phone.

 

“I already told him two days ago that I wasn’t taking that case,” Sherlock said. “It was dull.”

 

“Aw, go easy on Lestrade,” John said, rolling his fingernail lightly around the base of the nipple, where the skin was stretched tight over a growing layer of fat and newly developed tissue. “He’s an alpha admitting he needs an omega’s help. I’m still surprised he’s even willing to ask for help.”

 

“No. He’s an idiot and I don’t want the case,” Sherlock grumbled, leaning into John’s hand. “Ah--more, John,” he breathed. 

 

“I’m really starting to like what pregnancy is doing to you,” John remarked with (Sherlock thought) a little smugness. He was about to protest that they didn’t  _ know _ , that he might not be, but then John shifted and there was his other hand, and Sherlock arched his back and  _ oh. _

 

Sherlock stopped worrying about it for several hours.

 

\-- 

6:55 am. Sherlock woke up five minutes before John’s alarm was set to go off and folded back the blankets silently. He crept to the bathroom in the grey, nearly-dawn light, waiting until he had shut the door to switch the lights on. He lined up three tests on the counter, took a deep breath, and set the timer on his phone. 

 

_ Negative. Negative. Negative. _

 

Chemistry was betraying him. That was the only explanation for all of the facts. The unmistakably swollen and sensitive new breast tissue. The extended napping. The actual appetite for food. The sudden increase in another appetite. Sherlock blushed, then frowned at the tests. 

 

_ Why are you doing this to me _ , he thought, then was instantly irritated at himself for the irrationality of his thoughts. 

 

He threw the tests in the trash with perhaps more force than necessary, then washed his hands, turned the lights off, and climbed back into bed next to John.

 

“Mmmf. Morning, love,” John said, rolling over to face him and wrapping an arm around Sherlock’s waist. 

 

“They were negative,” Sherlock said, letting the confusion he felt out into his voice. “I don’t understand. Am I crazy? Because all this--” he flapped his hands at his traitorous body and then looked back at John. “Right? I’m not crazy?”

 

“You’re not crazy. You’re definitely pregnant,” John said. 

 

“Then why do the tests--,” Sherlock choked on the last words of the sentence, his eyes filling. “Why is this happening,” he whispered eventually, when he could speak again. 

 

“I don’t know,” John said.

 

\--

 

_ Negative. Negative. Negative. _

 

Sherlock stared at the latest round of tests, the slightly nervous, hopeful feeling he had had only a few minutes earlier congealing into something dull and aching in the pit of his stomach. 

 

Either yesterday or the day before, depending on the accuracy of his calculations, which Sherlock acknowledged  _ could _ be (but privately, he thought they were damn accurate) flawed, Sherlock should have gone into heat. He sat on the side of the bathtub, staring at the trio of unambiguously negative tests, his non-heat-addled mind whirling. 

 

“Breathe, love. You’re having a panic attack,” John said, folding his hands around one of Sherlock’s. John. When had John come into the bathroom? He couldn’t be sure. 

 

“I--” Sherlock drew in a ragged breath, trying to slow his breathing to a normal rate and failing. He snatched his hand away from John’s and glared at him. “Why are you doing this to me?” he accused through a fresh wave of tears. 

 

\-- 

 

At some point, John stood, opened the bathroom door, and left. 

 

\--

**It’s ok if you don’t want to talk right now. Can I sit with you?** John was in the bathroom again, holding his phone out to Sherlock with some words showing on the screen, and Sherlock wasn’t sure when he had gotten there or how long it had been since he had left. 

 

Sherlock read the phone twice and then reached for it, taping out a few words and smudging tears onto the screen.    **Fine. But don’t say anything stupid.**

 

John took the phone back and sat down on the side of the tub beside Sherlock. They stayed there awhile.

 

\--

 

Sherlock adjusted the way his black-and-yellow graduate chemists’ hood hung over his white robes, glanced once at his reflection in the dressing room mirror, then grabbed his violin, bow, and sheet music and hurried to the chapel.

 

He had considered skipping this, calling the rector and making some excuse, but in the end he had come anyway. It was one hour and he would only be playing for thirty minutes of that, and Mrs. Hudson had wanted so much for him to play a mass at her church…He tried to put away all thoughts of the non-heat and negative tests from his mind, and by fifteen minutes into the mass he had mostly succeeded. The priest was talking, and Sherlock focused more on the rise and fall of the words, the cadence of the woman’s voice, than the words themselves. 

 

His belly started to ache, somewhere deeper than the familiar ‘forgot to eat for two days’ ache. Sherlock set his violin on his knee and tried to ignore it.

 

He did so love incense, Sherlock thought, watching the thurifer swing the censer back and forth before a gospel book with a polished brass cover. He took a deep breath, savoring the pine and sweetgrass-filled smoke and tuning out the lector’s words completely. A few more minutes and then he would play that doxology setting that he particularly liked. 

 

Something began to feel a bit wet. Sherlock tried to ignore it, but by the time the lector was finished and thurifer was swirling the incense again thoughts were swimming through Sherlock’s head and the only cogent thing he could think was  _ not through the robes. Not up here, in front of all these people. Please don’t let anyone see.  _

 

He grew more and more panicked as the mass continued. The wet feeling started to be--more, was the only way he could think to describe it, and Sherlock became uncomfortably aware that his robes were white and that he was sitting on part of them. Fear began to coil in his stomach and he wished there was a way he could leave without being seen, but from his seat in the chancel, it was impossible.

 

He raised his violin and played the first notes of  _ Cwm Rhondda _ , forcing himself to keep to the usual tempo of the song, and the clergy started to process out.  _ Hurry, hurry, hurry,  _ Sherlock’s mind screamed, but he held his hands steady and his bow even. 

 

Then miraculously it was over, and he tucked his violin under his arm, abandoning his sheet music at his stand, and strode towards the door, his robes shushing around his feet and something feeling even more wet. 

 

“That was lovely, thank you,” a man in collar said as he stepped through the side door of the chapel onto the sidewalk. 

 

“Er um yes thank you,” Sherlock replied, not slowing his steps. He hurried around the side of the chapel, cut through the parking lot, and made it to the back door of the church near the choir loft (which should more accurately be called a choir dungeon, as it was in the basement of the chapel), and down the stairs. He was practically running now, but the door of the restroom was in sight and he was desperate to get in there. 

 

There. He set his violin and bow on the side table just inside the men’s room, then flew into a stall and bolted the door. He flung his robes and hood over his head, then mashed them up and hung them over the door. He grabbed at his shirt, pulling it untucked as he almost broke the zipper on his trousers to get them off, off  _ off.  _

 

Sherlock tore his pants off, eyes raking over the fabric for proof of what he already knew was true, then saw the blood dripping down his legs. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This fic is very heavily based on the last few weeks of my life. Today I started having a chemical miscarriage in church while wearing white choir robes. Luckily, like Sherlock, nothing got onto the robes. I'm sure I would have died of embarrassment if it had. It helped me to write this. I hope it does some good for someone else who may be in a similar situation. If you got through it, thank you for reading. 
> 
> The title is from the end of the first verse of Cwm Rhondda. It's always been one of my favourite hymns, both to play on the violin and to sing.


End file.
